The Producers Guild of America (PGA) nominations have just come in and the ten nominees are everything common sense predicted they would be… except for one. Joining the list of contenders for the PGA's, one of the best predictors of the Academy Awards, is Skyfall, the 23rd canonical James Bond film and the first entry in the franchise to crack $1 billion at the box office. Since the Academy Awards raised the number of Best Picture nominees – leading the PGAs to follow suit – a handful of blockbusters have actually managed to break into the frontrunners (Inception, District 9 and Avatar have all been nominated).
Well… perhaps. The Producers Guild is somewhat kinder than the Academy. Although their nominations usually match up with the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, they also nominated J.J. Abram's Star Trek back in 2010, and yet the Academy found no room in their hearts for that popular sci-fi reboot. Skyfall could be a different story, and certainly seems to have made an impression upon industry insiders, but it sure seems like a long shot compared to the other nominations for the PGA Awards, which pretty much completely match up with the predicted contenders. So much so that we don't even feel the need to elaborate further. With the exception of Skyfall, this is pretty much exactly what we expected from the PGAs, and expect to see when the Academy Award nominations are announced next Thursday, January 10.
The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures :
Argo (Warner Bros.) Producers: Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Producers: Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, Josh Penn
Django Unchained (The Weinstein Company) Producers: Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone, Stacey Sher
Les Misérables (Universal Pictures) Producers: Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh
Life of Pi (Fox 2000 Pictures) Producers: Ang Lee, Gil Netter, David Womark
Lincoln (Touchstone Pictures) Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
Moonrise Kingdom (Focus Features) Producers: Wes Anderson & Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales
Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Company) Producers: Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon
Skyfall (Columbia Pictures) Producers: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson
Zero Dark Thirty (Columbia Pictures)
Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Megan Ellison
The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures :
Brave (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures) Producer: Katherine Sarafian
Frankenweenie (Walt Disney Pictures) Producers: Allison Abbate, Tim Burton
ParaNorman (Focus Features) Producers: Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
Rise of the Guardians (Paramount Pictures) Producers: Nancy Bernstein, Christina Steinberg
Wreck-It Ralph (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Clark Spencer
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline's Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
